Just Like Dad Had Always Predicted, My Helmet Saved My Life

Yup, without this geeky, hairdo mussing piece of plastic I would have passed on to other realms. My C1 vertabra was fractured but stable and my T6, 7, &8 were compressed but unlikely to require surgery. The next challenge would be to find a bed for me, somewhere within our glorious underfunded public healthcare system. I was told that I was lucky, a bed had been found at Royal Columbian Hospital that I could have by tomorow night. In the meantime, I could enjoy the accomodations of Burnaby ER. No water, no food, but pain meds on demand! Things were looking up. There was one moment of decided drama when I suddenly vomited the blackberries I had stopped to pick before the accident. To an unwarned medical type spewing partially digested blackberries look a lot like something....else and there was suddenly a great flurry of suction tubes and latex devices. Once they realized it was only blackberries they left it to harden in my hair for the next five days.

Anyone who has ever spent time in an ER when they really should be somewhere else knows that the units are just set up for triage, not for care. That being said, I had some of the sweetest nurses on the planet watch over me that night. The crew that arrived to replace them in the morning was another story. They took three tries to try and get me on a backboard before figuring out it was upside down and must have taken offence to my asking if they knew what they were doing. Obviously the pain meds were making me a smart ass, so my rations were arbitrarily cut. After my 4th denied request for pain meds I tried to sympathise with the nurse, saying I knew they were over worked and underpaid and the mInister of health was an ass but I was in really serious pain. She finally arrived with a needle, jabbed it in my arm and when I said thank you said "Just doing my job."